r0ckyreed

Lol. Your guru is so full of biases and tricked you into thinking they are advanced. The only thing stopping you from making your own salad is kissing your gurus feet to make it for you. If there is nothing stopping me, then I wouldn’t need to give my authority away.

Correct. Nobody can bring you into the light but yourself. People can encourage you and motivate you, but the answer to enlightenment can only be found inside. Only you can walk that path and nobody else can do it for you. Others can preach all about that and you can listen to them all you want. But at some point, it all becomes a distraction from looking within. All a spiritual teacher is doing is pointing to a place inside yourself. The biggest mistake is looking at their finger instead of going to where they are pointing. This over-reliance on others is bullcrap co-dependency.

The ultimate guru is yourself. I have spent years listening to others, but it was after listening to my own intuition was when I reached my highest levels of growth. We are all faced with two choices of being leaders or followers. The only reason we put these spiritual gurus on pedestals is that they were able to do what we have not yet. They were able to seek the answers through their own innate faculties. If the Buddha learned all he learned through Jesus, then we would be praising Jesus and not Buddha. The only reason people put these guys on pedestals is because they were able to independently derive these insights for themselves and develop self-leadership. We all influence each other. But this doesn’t mean that we do not each have innate knowledge of God. We do.

Beat me to it. Was gonna come back to say this includes ChatGPT. You have to always contemplate how you know any information you receive is true even if it is from Harvard or ChatGPT or any source you consider credible.

Not true at all. With everything I have ever learned, my mind will interpret any teaching in my own unique way. The teaching of no-self, for instance, will not have the same meaning for everyone. This is a flaw in your thinking because insights do not belong to anybody. Every insight ever received came from the Self. Other people have an influence, but we do not have the same insight. I attained many of my insights independent of any teacher. It is a contradiction to say the insights aren’t mine because the very definition of an insight is that it comes from me. If it doesn’t come from me, it is education, indoctrination, or belief. By that very logic, we could say that nobody owns an idea because language was invented by a group of people long ago. Even though, I didn’t invent the English language doesn’t mean that any thought I have in English can’t be original.

It is important to study from others. But awakening is different from your med school analogy because what you are learning is how to help others to live. Whereas, spirituality is how to help yourself to awaken to who you are existentially. In that case, nobody can know that better than you. The path isn’t linear. It is good to study the journeys of others to give you ideas of what is possible. But you have to walk your own path; otherwise, you will waste years of your life.

The alien in me would say, you only know you are experiencing not what you have experienced. What you experienced assumes that there is a past experience other than what you are experiencing now. How do you test the limits without contemplation? Contemplation is the best way I have discovered for testing the limits. Contemplation is the process of unraveling falsehood and experiencing what is true through deep focused curious awareness and questioning.

You didn’t ask him at all about solipsism or Infinite Gods?

I have two perspectives. Perspective 1: Ambition = Desire + Discipline Presence = Mindfulness + Satisfaction + playfulness Ambition + Presence = Success Perspective 2: Be + Do = Have

Solipsism is true at the Absolute/God level but not true in the relative/human realm because God is total and alone and God divided its experience in the relative realm, which means a dog I see has an experience similar and different from mine.

I can’t change the laws in my waking dream but I can in my sleeping dreams. For instance, I cannot awaken in this dream and then ghost through a wall but at night I can.

Thanks for that trip report. It awakened me a little bit to realize more about eternity. The girl seemed to imply that her friends were the same god as her and yet each had their own experiences. She was able to tap into them but not fully. This is what I was suggesting in that others have experiences, but it is all still within the same reality. Her insight was of Infinite Gods and not solipsism. If she said her friends were imaginary, then that would be solipsism, but she was able to tap into their experiences which is contrary to solipsism.

If others do actually have experiences, then it isn’t just a concept. If you right now are actually conscious, then your experience is more than a concept. But if you are a philosophical zombie appearing like you are conscious but really aren’t, then I would agree that others are concepts. But it seems like you, others, and my dog have a private experience that is beyond my own.

And they would also judge him for not buying any at all, saying that he has no experience to comment. But the OP does have experience of it, and therefore, OP has a right to talk about it, whereas outsiders have no authority on the matter. You get my point.

That is the million dollar question. That will vary to each person. For me, it is contemplation that raises my awareness the most. For you, it may be visualization or body scan, chakra meditation, or whatever. Just sit and notice everything just happening entirely on its own. Then, think about free will.

What does meditation mean to you? What is your meditation practice?

You imagine the boundary. That is how. A distinction is nothing but a boundary you draw. You have to draw the line somewhere; otherwise, there is nothing to discuss. Of course, all boundaries are imaginary and arbitrary.

But if everything is one and my experience is absolute, why are there other experiences that I cannot access? Why can’t I access your experience? My human experience is finite.

That’s like saying sound is purely conceptual. Sound is a concept but sound is also an experience. You are dismissing that reality is an experience and not just something you think. Your concepts are occurring in a reality of some sort. Otherwise, there is no truth to what you are saying. You ain’t gonna convince anyone that consciousness is a concept. You are conscious right now whether you are conceptualizing or not.

Not sure I understand because if you are saying difference is imaginary but sameness isn’t, then you have created a duality. If there is no other, there is no self. If there is no difference, there is no sameness. If there is no space, then there is no object. This is another contradiction. Sameness has to be imaginary because everything is always changing. There is nothing the same/identical in reality? You could say the substance is the same, but the contents are different.

Consciousness isn’t a concept. All concepts occur within Consciousness.

You aren’t getting it. The moon isnt just a pure concept. The idea of a moon points to an actual moon. Whereas the idea of Santa doesn’t point to anything in existence of actuality. For instance, Leo’s toilet isn’t just my imagination. I can go out and find Leo’s toilet. This is different from Santa Clause.

What are you meaning by state and contemplation? From my understanding, you view contemplation as deeply thinking about something and state as one’s level of consciousness.

Right. Peter Ralston discusses this in his book that contemplation is all about direct consciousness of truth. But isn’t an insight a state change? Does contemplation bring about a deeper state change than meditation? All the times I have spent counting my breaths in meditation, I could have spent contemplating a question and gaining a valuable insight. I am not sure how chanting, counting breaths, etc. will bring about the state change. Meditation makes me more blissful and contemplation makes me more insightful.

But what about contemplation and curiosity? Being present without curiosity won’t lead to awakening. This is the downside of meditation and shutting off the mind. There are plenty of dogmatic meditators who sit very presently and can access satori’s and samadhis, but this isn’t the same as complete understanding of reality. I don’t think meditation can ever lead to the highest levels of understanding because meditation encourages us to shut off the mind rather than to utilize it to explore our curiosity. Do you see how shutting off the mind is only exploring half of reality, whereas using our mind explores the other half. I am certain that contemplation leads to the highest levels of understanding because contemplation is being deeply curious. Without curiosity and contemplation, even psychedelics and the Buddha himself cannot awaken you. Awakening is a process that happens from within in the same way that medicine helps the body/mind do what it needs to do to heal from within. All meditation has ever done for me is make me feel happier and peaceful. All of my deepest insights have come from me sitting down and thinking curiously and critically about the present moment or what have you. Correct me if I am wrong, but awakening is about insight and truth rather than my happiness, suffering, and how I feel. Meditation helps more with the latter and contemplation is effective with both.